Importing Data into Collections

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Just one question , can we perform a search on collections ?

Just one question , can we perform a search on collections ?

Yes. You can perform simple search within admin panel of collections.

No the search is for the users landing on the page . For eg lets say i have a collection of property listings . Is there a way the user( page visitor) can perform a search ( just like the one you see in an e-commerce website with filters ) ?

https://docs.grabaperch.com/functions/search/

Official apps also register themselves with search so their content will be included.

Search Functions Search is part of Perch Core functionality and enables you to add a simple text search to your site.

Search can only search content that has been added through Perch and not static pages that you have added. Official apps also register themselves with search so their content will be included.

Perch comes complete with an example search page in the root of the download folder called search.php.

Also in the Perch download is a template in perch/templates/search. This template has all of the search template fields in it, including paging and can be used as is or you can edit the mark-up as with any Perch template.

To get search working make sure you have the template in your site in perch/templates/search then visit search.php in your browser and search for things that appear in your content.

ALSO SEE: perch_collection() as you can formulate a filter based on search and out put the filtered response...

<?php
perch_collection('Properties', [
    'filter' => [
        [
            'filter' => 'bedrooms',
            'match'  => 'gte',
            'value'  => 3,
        ],
        [
            'filter' => 'price',
            'match'  => 'lte',
            'value'  => 500000,
        ],
    ]
]);
?>

Hi Robert ,

I tried writing a php script for importing the collections from the xml .

<?php
include('perch/runtime.php');
$API      = new PerchAPI(1.0, 'my_importer');
$Importer = $API->get('CollectionImporter');
$Importer->set_collection('property');
$Template = $API->get('Template');
$Template->set('/shades/perch/templates/content', 'property');

$Importer->set_template($Template);
$Importer->empty_collection();

$xml=simplexml_load_file("https://shades.mycrm.com/feed/privatesite/0744a0be5fac33c3b3e69c6b26e97d1e") or die("Error: Cannot create object");

foreach($xml->children() as $propertylistings) { 
echo $propertylistings->reference_number;
    try {
    $Importer->add_item([
        'property'    => $propertylisting->reference_number,
    ]);    
} catch (Exception $e) {
    die('Error: '.$e->getMessage());
}
} 
?> 

And my template was

<perch:content id="property" type="text" label="Title" required>

unfortunately , i get the warning :

NA-1166143
Warning: Invalid argument supplied for foreach() in C:\xampp\htdocs\shades\perch\core\runway\lib\PerchCollectionImporter.class.php on line 54
NA -1057859
Warning: Invalid argument supplied for foreach() in C:\xampp\htdocs\shades\perch\core\runway\lib\PerchCollectionImporter.class.php on line 54
YE-1174881
Warning: Invalid argument supplied for foreach() in C:\xampp\htdocs\shades\perch\core\runway\lib\PerchCollectionImporter.class.php on line 54

I could see that it is looping through the xml , but what did i do wrong here ? i can also see that the collections still has 0 items in it .

Hello Titus,

Your template path and namespace don't look right:

$Template->set('/shades/perch/templates/content', 'property');

If your template is /perch/templates/content/property.html, then you would use

$Template->set('content/property', 'content');

Perfect , that helped out !

Just one last question , have a look at the below xml

<property>
<sample>
<image>
<url></url>
<url></url>
</image>
</sample>
</property>

how do i iterate through nested childrens ? for eg: here in images , there are multiple urls . how do i store them in collections ?

 'property_image'    =>  [$propertylisting->image->url]  ,

I tried the above it doesn't work out .

how do i iterate through nested childrens ? for eg: here in images , there are multiple urls .

This is not a Perch-specific question. You need to look at how you parse your XML. If you expect $propertylisting->image to have children, you can iterate over it the same way you're iterating over $xml:

$images = array();

foreach($propertylisting->image->children() as $image_url) {
$images[] = $image_url->__toString(); 
}

// now array $images contain your image URLs

how do i store them in collections?

Do you only want to store the URLs? Or do you want to import the images as Perch Assets?

I need to import them as perch assets . Thanks a lot for the effort btw I'm kind of new into PHP .

I tried this out , but how do I input multiple images to one item ?

This is what confuses me .

<?php
include('perch/runtime.php');
$API      = new PerchAPI(1.0, 'my_importer');
$Importer = $API->get('CollectionImporter');
$Importer->set_collection('property');
$Template = $API->get('Template');
$Template->set('content/text', 'content');
$Importer->set_template($Template);
$Importer->empty_collection();
$xml=simplexml_load_file("feed.xml") or die("Error: Cannot create object");
foreach($xml->children() as $propertylisting) { 
$images = array();
foreach($propertylisting->photo->children() as $image_url) {
$images[] = $image_url->__toString(); 
}
    try {
    $Importer->add_item([
        'permit_number'    =>  $propertylisting->reference_number  ,
        'reference_number'    =>  $propertylisting->permit_number  ,
        'property_image'    =>  $images[0]
    ]);    
} catch (Exception $e) {
    die('Error: '.$e->getMessage());
}
} 
?> 

Never mind , i found out a solutions for it . Do let me know if i can do something better .

<?php
include('perch/runtime.php');
$API      = new PerchAPI(1.0, 'my_importer');
$Importer = $API->get('CollectionImporter');
$Importer->set_collection('property');
$Template = $API->get('Template');
$Template->set('content/text', 'content');
$Importer->set_template($Template);
$Importer->empty_collection();
$xml=simplexml_load_file("feed.xml") or die("Error: Cannot create object");
foreach($xml->children() as $propertylisting) { 
$images = array();
foreach($propertylisting->photo->children() as $image_url) {
$images[] = $image_url->__toString(); 
}
    try {
    $Importer->add_item([
        'permit_number'    =>  $propertylisting->reference_number  ,
        'reference_number'    =>  $propertylisting->permit_number  ,
        'property_image_1'    =>  $images[0],
         'property_image_2'    =>  $images[1],
        'property_image_3'    =>  $images[2],
        'property_image_4'    =>  $images[3],
        'property_image_5'    =>  $images[4],
        'property_image_6'    =>  $images[5],

    ]);    
} catch (Exception $e) {
    die('Error: '.$e->getMessage());
}
} 
?> 

how do I input multiple images to one item ?

Normally you would use a repeater:

<perch:repeater id="images" label="images">
<perch:content id="image_url" type="text" label="Image URL">
</perch:repeater>

But the API doesn't support importing content into repeaters at the moment; so you can't use repeaters for storing content.

I need to import them as perch assets

To simplify things, I would import the URLs as text instead.

1. It would be more resource intensive to import lots of images as Perch Assets
2. The API doesn't support importing into a repeater (you have a variable number of images)

A workaround would be to store all the URLs in a single text field separated by a character (e.g. ;).

Add a text field to your template:

<perch:content id="image_urls" type="text" label="Image URLs" help="Separated by semicolon" no-index>

Modify your importer accordingly:

foreach ($xml->children() as $propertylisting) {
    // array to hold the data you want to import
    $property_data = array();

    // add any data to the array $property_data
    $property_data = [
        'permit_number' => $propertylisting->reference_number,
        'reference_number' => $propertylisting->permit_number,
    ];



    // grab the images
    $images = array();
    foreach ($propertylisting->image->children() as $image_url) {
        $images[] = $image_url->__toString(); 
    }

    // add the images to your data array
    $property_data['image_urls'] = implode(';', $images);


    // import
    try {
        $Importer->add_item($property_data);
    } catch (Exception $e) {
        die('Error: ' . $e->getMessage());
    }
}

Then wherever you display the properties using perch_collection() use the each option to prepare the image URLs in an array so you can display them using a repeater:

perch_collection('properties', [
    'template' => 'properties/list',
    'each' => function($item) {
        if(isset($item['image_urls'])) {
            $images = explode(';', $item['image_urls']);
            $repeater_images = array();
            foreach($images as $image) {
                $repeater_images[] = ['image' => $image];
            }

            $item['images'] = $repeater_images;
        }

        return $item;
    }
]);

Then in your display template, you can display the images in a repeater:

<perch:repeater id="images">
<img src="<perch:content id="image">" >
</perch:repeater>

p.s. don't add the repeater to the edit template. Only add it to templates you use for displaying the content on the site.